


talk low, talk slow, and don't talk too much

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Minor Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, Mocking, acquaintances to friends, implied sarchengsey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23531863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: It dawns on Ronan that neither of the people he'd actually invited had shown up to help. And for some goddamn reason Chenghad.
Relationships: Henry Cheng & Ronan Lynch
Comments: 36
Kudos: 362





	talk low, talk slow, and don't talk too much

**Author's Note:**

  * For [two_of_swords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_of_swords/gifts).



> Written for two_of_swords who requested Ronan asking the gang for help on the farm but only Cheng shows up. Perhaps fittingly, I then took a really long time to write this ficlet about people not showing up when you ask them to. Whoops?

"Howdy, pilgrim."

Ronan turns around far enough to scowl at Cheng, but not so far he brains himself with the plank he's holding. "Do I look like some Thanksgiving loser to you?"

"No," Cheng says. "But I am not going to let your deficiencies stop me from being John Wayne."

"You're not a cowboy just because you're wearing boots." Especially not when they're purple, what the hell. It takes Ronan a second to look past the boots and the giant hat and the bandana around his neck -- seriously, what the hell -- and realize that the car Cheng is leaning against is his Ferrari.

It isn't like Gansey to ride passenger in someone else's car. Ronan's stomach sinks.

"Where's Dick?"

"Brunching with the materfamilias," Cheng says. "She was passing through town and demanded his presence."

Ronan drops the plank and steps away from the barn. "He could've told her he had plans."

"He doesn't like to refuse her. She's been so touchy ever since he dropped off the face of the earth for an entire day and then died."

"We had _plans_ ," Ronan says again. Gansey wouldn't've broken plans with his family just to get brunch with Ronan, but apparently time with Ronan wasn't as sacred. It wasn't even a big enough of a deal for him to tell Ronan himself. He just -- didn't show up.

Cheng shrugs. Ronan glares past him and into the Ferrari, waiting for Sargent to crawl out of the car wearing God knows what stupid cowgirl costume she's thrown together to match Cheng. She's too small to be any help herself, but she can probably boss Cheng around into being useful; he seems to be into that.

Except Sargent doesn't get out of the car. No one does.

It dawns on Ronan that neither of the people he'd actually invited had shown up to help. And for some goddamn reason Cheng _had_.

Cheng is looking around the landscape, a thoughtful expression on his face like he's coming to the same conclusion. "Where is your young man?"

"He has an interview with some Harvard asshole."

"I thought he had his eyes on Yale."

"He's keeping his options open," Ronan snaps. This is a golden opportunity to talk about his boyfriend, namedrop all the Ivies he's applying to, but he doesn't want to. Something must be seriously wrong if he's too pissed off to brag about Adam.

"Well," Cheng says, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. His watch catches the light and reflects it into Ronan's eyes. "I suppose it is only I who will roll up my sleeves and help."

"This is a farm, not a shopping mall. What good do you think you'll be?"

"You wouldn't ask if you'd ever seen my Stardew Valley save."

"That doesn't count for shit."

"Do you even know what Stardew Valley is?"

"I don't have to know to tell that it's garbage."

"Hm, I suppose you are well-versed in making judgment calls from a place of ignorance," Cheng says. "Where do we start?"

"Nowhere," Ronan draws the word out, because Cheng isn't getting it. "I don't need you to hang around just because everyone else has something better to do."

That doesn't help Cheng get it, either. He stops looking around the Barns and zeroes in on Ronan.

"Aw, Lynch," and there's a horrifying note of pity in his voice. "Do you think that no one cares about you?"

"No. Bullshit. I didn't say that."

"Because it isn't true," Cheng continues right on, ignoring Ronan's words and also his _shut the fuck up_ glare. "And I can prove it." He pulls out his phone out of his pocket.

Ronan takes a half step back, wary. "What are you doing with that thing?"

"Reading you all of the admiring texts that Gansey sends me about you." He looks up from the screen. "Be not afraid, little Lynch, I'm not going to assault with my cell phone."

"Fuck off, I'm not _afraid_ , and I don't need -- " He thinks through the rest of what Cheng said. He doesn't care, really, but if Cheng's going to do whatever the fuck he wants to do anyway, then why not? "What'd he say?"

"Aha, so you are interested."

"No."

"Here he says you are 'noble'. Here he says you are a 'stalwart companion.' And here he asks me to help you out today since he wouldn't be able to and, quote, 'I would like to be as considerate of a friend to Lynch as he is to me,' which is where I asked him to please clarify that he meant you and not some other farm-owning Lynch of his acquaintance."

Ronan says "hah" in a flat tone of voice. He rolls his eyes but kind of shifts his weight at the same time, wondering if there's any way to get close enough to see the phone screen.

Cheng grins at him like he knows exactly what Ronan is doing. "These are all from just the last couple of days, if you're wondering. Would you like me to give you the phone, so you can read them for yourself?"

Ronan crosses his arms. "No."

"Oh, here Gansey calls you 'brave.' I would go with _foolhardy,_ myself. And here he is forwarding me a photo that Ms. Sargent took of you. And another photo. And another photo."

"So Sargent likes to piss me off, what's your point?"

"She likes to have memories of you she can hold onto. Also probably she likes to piss you off," he admits. "But are you going to tell me that you don't consider annoyance a valid love language?"

"There are no valid love languages."

"Mm-hm," Cheng says, unimpressed. "What about your boyfriend?"

" _Enough_. You don't get to talk about that."

"Fine, I won't." Cheng doesn't even give him enough time to let his guard down before he adds, "except to say that if you think that Parrish doesn't care about you, then you have never seen the way that he looks at you. It's appalling, honestly, I've had to seriously question that famous intelligence of his."

"Yeah, thanks." Ronan makes a _shoo_ gesture. "Now that you're done harassing me you can run along."

"Oh, no, absolutely not. Either you're lonely and I must stay to keep you company, or you're fine and ready to work and so I must stay and help."

"I don't need help."

"Then why the call to arms?"

"I wanted to watch Sargent try to haul around shit that's taller than her."

Cheng says " _love language_ " in a loud stage whisper. Ronan kicks a rock at him.

"Or," he continues, like he didn't just skip to the side to avoid scuffing his boots, "if you insist on getting all sweaty and smeared in dirt while I have nothing better to do but sit here and watch, by all means, don't let me stop you."

Ronan turns the whole thing around in his mind. It doesn't matter what angle he looks at it from.

"How is every fucking outcome you win, I lose?" he demands.

Cheng waves the question off with a one-handed flourish. "Success is all in your mindset."

Ronan huffs. If he can't make Cheng lose, he just has to go with the least bad option. And it is pretty awkward handling all of this by himself.

"Grab a hammer. And lose the hat," he says, when Cheng brightens, "you look like an idiot."

Cheng grabs a hammer from the pile of tools and lumber and other shit that Ronan had dragged outside because it looked useful. He doesn't take his hat off, though, just tilts it back further on his head.

"What catastrophe struck here?" he asks, like he's just now noticed there's a gaping hole in the side of one of the barns.

"Me."

"So you agree you're a catastrophe."

Ronan glowers at him: _catastrophes are dangerous_.

Cheng yawns. "That would be more frightening if you didn't just admit to busting through your own wall like the Kool-Aid Man."

Ronan snorts. That's -- almost funny. And it's not much worse than the truth. He'd rather not own up to accidentally pulling a firework out of a dream, or lying frozen worrying that it would go off, or picking it up very slowly and carefully and then dropping it anyway because Opal snuck up behind him and surprised him.

"Quit stalling," he says instead. "Show me how bad you are with tools."

"Don't attempt to shame me. If I'm a disaster then I fit right in around here, don't I?"

He is a disaster, but Ronan had done as much work on the barn yesterday as he could by himself; what he needs at this point is an extra set of hands. There isn't a lot Cheng can do to screw up _holding shit_. It doesn't even seem like he's trying to screw it up, really. He focuses on what they're doing and stops babbling, now that Ronan's agreed to let him stay.

Repairing the wall takes them a couple hours work. It's not fun or anything. But it doesn't totally suck.

Opal appears just as they're finishing up, glaring at the barn like she liked it better with a giant fucking hole in it -- which was an opinion she could have expressed at some point _before_ Ronan broke his fucking back fixing it. By the time he's told her this and she's slunk off to sulk about it, Cheng is nearly at the door to the house.

"Where do you think you're going?" Ronan calls out. Willingly starting a conversation with Cheng, ugh, what even is today.

"Inside," Cheng says without a trace of remorse.

"You can't just invade my house."

"If you'd offered to get me a refreshing beverage then I wouldn't have to get one for myself, would I?" He ducks inside.

"Fuck's sake," Ronan mutters. He can't be assed to swear for real. Maybe he's used up his irritation for the day. He didn't think that was possible, but here he is.

Cheng comes back out a minute later already sipping a beer. He brought one for Ronan too, so Ronan only hassles him a little bit, and he shrugs it off anyway, "this is all that you had in your fridge, it was truly dire." He drops onto a seat on the porch.

Ronan sits down, to start, but he decides his back feels like shit and he lies down flat on the ground to see if that helps. It does, although it makes drinking a challenge. He's still trying to figure out how to pull that off when he hears an unmistakable engine rumble. He turns his head to be sure and spills beer up his nose.

He sits bolt upright and wheezes and says "shut up" to Cheng, who's laughing at him, all at the same time. When his eyes finally clear, Gansey and Sargent are getting out of the Pig.

He lets them come to him. He's been breaking his back while they were off brunching and -- actually he doesn't know what Sargent was up to. He decides it was something stupid.

"Wow, you both made it through the morning," Sargent says. "I thought for sure we'd get out here and find a smoking crater. I was all set to turn you into an urban legend."

"Nonsense," Gansey says, "I had no doubts." He had doubts. He still has doubts; they're written all over his face, like maybe when he gets to the porch it will turn out to be a mirage.

"You missed quite a day," Cheng says, stretching his arms in the showiest way possible. He almost knocks his stupid cowboy hat off. "Lynch was the epitome of rugged manliness. And I made a very butch handyman, I must say."

"Yeah, I'm sure _you_ say that." Sargent at least owns her skepticism. "Somehow I feel like Ronan would say something different."

Ronan had taken the hammer away from Cheng after the fourth time in a row that he hit his own thumb. But fuck it, he was still more useful than either of these losers.

"He's a regular John Wayne," Ronan says. "Just look at his boots."

Cheng grins and -- gah -- tips his hat at him. Blue and Gansey both look at Cheng with approval, which is even worse.

Fortunately for Ronan's sanity, the BMW pulls down the drive not long after -- Adam'd had to drive two hours to the nearest Harvard alum that did interviews with prospective students. Ronan wasn't going to let him do that in the Hondayota.

He's up off the porch in a flash, rolling on to his side and pushing himself up with a groan that makes Sargent cackle, "you okay down there, old man?" Like she can talk, she's wearing three different kinds of crochet. She looks like twelve grandmas.

Ronan makes it out to the driveway just as Adam's getting out of the car. Adam tries to hand him the keys, but Ronan slides an arm around him instead and buries his nose in his hair. Adam laughs and slides the keys into Ronan's pocket.

"How'd it go?" Ronan asks.

"Good. I think it was good." There's a hesitancy to the way he says it, but he's smiling, too, like it really was good. "God, I'm glad it's over, though. I'm glad to be back."

Ronan kisses the side of his face. What else is there to say?

Adam catches sight of the barn as they approach the house. "Oh. You fixed it without me? I would've helped."

"Eh, Cheng and I had it handled."

They're close enough to the porch now that Cheng feels the need to _chime in_ , like that's anything anyone ever wanted from him. "Yes, this way Lynch gets to show off for you. Aren't you impressed?"

"I'm always impressed by Lynch," Adam says, easily, like it doesn't make Ronan's face burn and his heart flip over. "Just the two of you? Why didn't you help?" he adds, to Blue and Gansey.

"We only just got here," Gansey says, but Ronan boos at him, and Cheng says, "that excuses nothing. I think they have to go fetch the next round, at the very least."

"At least," Ronan agrees.

They grumble, but they do head inside. Ronan goes to sit back on the floor, but Adam tugs him along to the porch swing. That's okay. Ronan feels a lot less tired than he did before.

"I hope it wasn't too much trouble," Adam tells Cheng. "Really, I would've helped."

"Please, it was no trouble at all," Cheng says. "Lynch and I are sympatico. Like this," and he crosses two of his fingers.

Ronan snorts and shows Cheng two of his own fingers. Cheng looks amused instead of offended. Ronan can't really be bothered to do anything about that, not when Cheng leans so far back in his seat that his hat falls off, not when Sargent and Gansey come back with the rest of a six pack and a pitcher of iced tea he didn't know he had, not when Ronan has the porch swing behind his back and Adam's arm around his waist and a barn that's going to stay intact for at least another week. He just -- can't be bothered about anything, so he leans back and listens to everyone else talk. It's not such a bad day.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/614773401428590592/ive-narrowed-it-down-to-3-prompts-for-you-to).


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